Computer systems are often shipped with hard drives formatted in a way that does not suit the system's intended use. For example, the disk may be initially formatted to have one partition occupying the entire capacity of the disk whereas what may be required is a second partition occupying a portion of the disk in conjunction with the first partition. Uses for the second partition may include providing storage for a file system containing system backups, disaster recovery files, diagnostic or repair applications, or any other purpose for which the user wishes to use the storage.
It may be inconvenient or technically infeasible to add additional hard disk storage to the system. In addition, there may be data already on the first partition that, for certain processes that create a second partition, has to be backed up and later restored.
A partition may be truncated to create to the right of the truncated partition free space (sectors not allocated to any partition) or a new partition. The new partition may have no file system, a newly formatted file system, or a formatted file system populated with data files, the region incorporating sectors originally belonging to the source partition.
Best practice storage management processes have the capability of modifying the current system to produce a new storage format while avoiding the cost of obtaining additional hard disk storage or other backup media and lost time. Time may be lost to transferring files off the first file system, configuring the hard drive with the intended partition and file system layout, transferring the backed up files to the first file system, system reboots between process steps, or system unavailability for general use at various points during the process. Existing methods for partition creation evidence one or more of these drawbacks.